I didn’t care what Big Ma said about scrubbing like a gal from a one-cow town near Prattville, Alabama. Only turpentine could wipe away the black and red ink that had seeped into the linoleum floor tiles. I wiped up all the ink I could before we went to bed that night. Everything else—the paper, the metal letters, and the mess the police made—would have to wait until we woke up. The day had been just too long.
When I pushed the kitchen door open in the morning, the room didn’t look any better. Streams of sunlight shot through Cecile’s cheap curtains and pointed out Delphine, you got a whole lot of work to do. A lot, girl.
I was set to do it. Pick up, put away, clean and mop everything. But I was still tired, which didn’t make sense to me. I had slept even longer than usual. Yet all I could do was sigh heavily when I saw the inside of Cecile’s kitchen. Everything that made me tall, able, and ready to do what had to be done made me sigh. I picked up the broken stool—the seat, legs, and scattered wood chips—then brought the pieces out to the trash can. There was nothing I could do about the printing machine. It was too heavy. I used all my strength to sit it upright on the floor. I wiped the rollers and laid them on top of the machine. Then I called Vonetta and Fern out of bed and put them to work helping me.
Without a squawk Vonetta gathered up all of the paper—and there was a heavy snowfall of paper. She made different piles. The scuffed and dirty papers went in one pile. The rally flyers went in another. The sheets of poetry with Cecile’s poet name, Nzila, printed on the bottom went in another. Vonetta spent most of her time separating out the different poems; and in between, she read them.
I had Fern hunt around the floor for the metal letters and put them up on the table where the printing machine once sat. I never realized how many metal letters Cecile had in the drawers and kitchen cabinets. She had boxes and boxes of them. Large and small capitals and lowercase letters. Different sizes and types of Ts. Some more boxy, some more curved. Some slanted but not like Hirohito’s eyes. Slanted like a leaning flower stem on a sunny day. Some Os and Qs and Cs long and narrow. Others round and squat. All sizes, all types. All over. Was this “movable type,” like her poem? Each letter free to be flung to all four corners?
Then Fern found two of Cecile’s special letters. The ones she used for her poetry name. The N and the Z. I found the I, L, and A. I polished those with the dish towel. These were a special type. Tall and curved, hooks on the ends, the Z coiled back to strike like a snake. In all her collection, these were the only letters of this kind. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had thrown out the other twenty-one letters, or if these were the only ones she had bought. Just so that only her name could be spelled out with these letters.
I mopped the floor once the papers, letter blocks, and mess had been cleared away. We brought all of the letters and boxes into the living room and spread out the tablecloth. We spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through Cecile’s letters. It was like a game. Finding the right letters, the right type, the right size. I put the “Nzila” letters in one box by themselves. We didn’t know if that was the right way, but at least it was a way. Vonetta took out one of Cecile’s poems and read it to us.
“I think it’s about us,” Vonetta said. “Look at the title: ‘I Birthed a Nation.’”
“You might be right,” I said.
“Surely might be.”
Vonetta said, “We should do this poem.” She read it again. It was a good poem for reciting out loud. The same way “We Real Cool” was a good poem for reciting. And then we joined her. Each of us taking a line, one after the other. Then we chose our own stanza but recited the last one together. We decided Cecile’s poem was in a way like “Dry Your Eyes.” We decided that it was about Mother Africa losing her children like Cecile had lost us. I didn’t remind my sisters that Cecile had left us.
Then there was a knock on the door and we froze. We remembered we were in Cecile’s green stucco house where the Black Panthers had come and the police had come and Cecile had been arrested and we were supposed to be the Clark sisters down the street. Not Cecile’s daughters reciting her poems in her house.
We became like spies. I mouthed, “Be quiet,” and hoped whoever was at the door would go away. They knocked again. I put my finger to my lips. Then Vonetta popped up her head and looked through the curtain.
“It’s Hirohito!” she cried out. “With an Oriental lady.”
I didn’t know what to be. Mad at Vonetta for being her Hirohito-crazy self. Relieved it was Hirohito. Nervous about the lady.
I cracked the door open.
Hirohito said loudly, “Open up, Delphine. It’s me. And my mom.”
His mother? I looked at my sisters. My sisters looked at me. Vonetta flapped her arms wildly, wanting me to open the door. I didn’t want to, but I did anyway. Hirohito’s mother was holding a pan with tinfoil over it. Then I felt rude and stupid. “Hello,” I said. “You can come in, but my mother isn’t home.”
I had never said that to anyone before. “My mother,” in a real way.
Vonetta and Fern were all smiles.
I closed the door quickly after they stepped inside.
“I know your mother isn’t home, Delphine,” Hirohito’s mother said. “I know.”
“She’ll be home soon,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.” The truth was, I didn’t know anything about Cecile and why they had taken her or how long she would be gone.
“Look. My mom made this food, and I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”
To that, Mrs. Woods gave Hirohito a slap against the head and said something to him in Japanese. He said, “Mom, I’m hungry.”
I was embarrassed that we didn’t have tables or chairs. I certainly didn’t want that going around the Center tomorrow. We had been laughed at enough for one summer. But Hirohito’s mother didn’t blink once when I said, “We always eat on the floor.” She put the tins on the floor while I got the plates, forks, and the biggest serving spoon I could find. Vonetta and Fern just giggled and kept asking Hirohito to say something in Japanese. He rolled his eyes.
We sat down and ate fried pork chops, rice, and string beans. I wanted to eat nicely like Mrs. Woods ate, but I ate hungrily like Cecile. Hirohito ate hungrily also. He scooped more rice and string beans onto his plate, and seeing that I was nearly done, he scooped more rice and string beans onto mine. I couldn’t look up at him. I just ate.
Mrs. Woods said, “We know the same things. We have to stick together.”